First up, we have the first set of battle screenshots for the game. You may recognize a few familiar faces. 🙂

We didn’t want to make Precipice of Darkness 4 a carbon-copy of the last game, so we’ve added a new monster ally system to the game. As you play through the game, you’ll recruit a variety of helpful monsters to your team, some of which will automatically join your party as you progress and some of which are hidden. Replacing the class system from the previous game, Precipice of Darkness 4 has a new trainer system where you can attach a human trainer like Gabe or Moira to a monster to give them new abilities and affect their stat growth. We’ve also taken various measures to encourage players to try out a variety of strategies throughout the game – for example, you can now analyze enemies & adjust your party composition before battles begin.

Another major request we’ve received from the last game is to go back to a traditional RPG world map. I think it’s coming along nicely.

We’re taking inspiration from great world maps like you see in games like Lunar: Eternal Blue & Chrono Trigger and avoiding the strict tile-based map style that you see in most older 8-bit and 16-bit RPGs in favor of a more organic visual style. The world map in Precipice of Darkness 4 isn’t just for show too – there will be a number of fun little secrets and bonus areas scattered throughout the map for the overachievers out there.

(Note: Full-size versions of the images can be viewed by clicking them).

Not sure what people have against random encounters. I feel that the only reason people don’t like them nowadays is because, like everything else, they need something that us older folks didn’t need back in the older days of every game having random battles. I enjoy them, they make me feel like a monsters lair is full of monster jumping out at me, instead of just the 10 I killed along the way to the boss that were just standing there waiting on me and not even trying to hide.

I agree with the commenter below me about random battles. One of the best things about Precipice 3 was the fixed battles as opposed to random battles (the worst trope in classic RPGs IMO). Another was that party health and items regenerated after each battle. Combined, it allowed you to make each battle a self-contained puzzle that I had to solve, which felt much better to me, and it never felt like I was “grinding” through your game. I really, really hope these two features return for Precipice 4.

The decision to add monster allies to the game was not made lightly – we all decided that this change would fit the ideas that Jerry Holkins had in mind for the 4th game better than sticking with the traditional 4 character party.

This is still very much a Penny Arcade game. I don’t want to give too many details since I don’t want to spoil some of the cool surprises we have in store for everyone. 🙂

As interesting as the whole monster companions mechanic sounds I’m not sure how I feel about it here. I loved Gabe and Tycho in the first game and it just seems odd that instead of them getting in the fray instead we get… pets. Hey, maybe it will be awesome but I’m just sayin’ that I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. Looking forward to it anyway 🙂

As much as I like monster-training games, I have to ask: is this really the best direction for RS4? People play these games because of the characters they know from the comics, namely Gabe and Tycho. If Gabe and Tycho aren’t the ones on screen fighting, is this really a Penny Arcade game?

You say you don’t want to make a carbon copy of the last game. Well, that’s nice. But if it ain’t broke, then why fix it? I was looking forward to playing this game. I really was.

Gorgeous world map. The characters, for better or for worse, stick out on the map.
How do they look if they have a slight shadow to them (to ground them)?
Something kind of like: http://i.imgur.com/C1dxV3i.png

The world map looks really nice. One of my biggest complaints with CSTW and BOD was that the world maps were obvious tilesets that looked generic, repetitive and frankly pretty bad. Chrono Trigger’s for instance though had smaller maps but so much variety and personality to them. That screenshot above looks like you’re really starting to hit your stride there. I can get so much information and sense of place of out of it, where I couldn’t really in your previous games.